Alice In Zombieland (a Book Review)

Note From MV: This is a post by Skylar Finn, writer, blogger, and lover of books. She's going to be contributing to my blog regularly, so please give her a warm welcome!

Alice In Zombieland by Gena Showalter

Pages: 404

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Goodreads


She won’t rest until she’s sent every walking corpse back to its grave. Forever.

Had anyone told Alice Bell that her entire life would change course between one heartbeat and the next, she would have laughed. From blissful to tragic, innocent to ruined? Please. But that’s all it took. One heartbeat. A blink, a breath, a second, and everything she knew and loved was gone.

Her father was right. The monsters are real….

To avenge her family, Ali must learn to fight the undead. To survive, she must learn to trust the baddest of the bad boys, Cole Holland. But Cole has secrets of his own, and if Ali isn’t careful, those secrets might just prove to be more dangerous than the zombies….

When I picked up Alice in Zombieland, I had already read two books that had zombies as major parts of the story. Therefore, even though I didn’t consider myself an expert on all things zombie, I thought I had a pretty good handle on what was what. Ehh.

Consider everything you thought you knew about zombies wiped out. These zombies are nothing like that.

The zombies in this book are spectral, incorporeal things—ghosts. They are the spirits of the dead that were people who got eaten by other zombies and who didn’t fight the darkness well enough to go to heaven. That’s why everything about them is so much more terrifying and fascinating.

I’ve watched World War Z and the zombies in that movie were absolutely disgusting (and horrifying)., especially when they just drove forward in hordes.

Imagine that, but spiritual. SPIRITUAL.

Something you can’t see, can’t fight normally, and you might not even know it was there. Um, I don’t know about you, but that is the stuff of nightmares for me right there.

Not only that, but the weapons used to fight the zombies (remember, these are invisible zombies, at least to the regular human eye *shudders*) and the methods used to fight them were really amazing and had unique explanations for how they worked. I applaud the author so hard *madly claps* for coming up with this incredible paranormal contemporary fantasy world!

Alice Bell is our main character and she first sees these zombies when her family is in a car accident. She sees them eating her father. It’s kind of hard to describe how something spiritual can eat something physical, but you have to remember that humans are parts physical AND parts spiritual. And let’s just say....Alice wasn’t the same after that.

Her pain and regret are so palpable during the accident and after. You can feel her sorrow, because “sad” isn’t the right word to describe her feelings. She loved her sister, she was her world, and her mom so much. And even though her and her dad had a lot of rough patches, she loved him too. The emotions are just done so well, especially in the first few chapters.

Alice was awesome. She was so strong and scared of nothing. Add in a dash of sarcasm and some kick-butt fighting, and you have the ultimate main character. There’s also something special about Alice in relation to the zombies. *wink wink*

Alice got a best friend too. Enter Kat. Kat is the best friend ever. She’s the sass queen. She’s confident. She’s so good for Alice. They make up a power duo.

Okay...so....if not everyone (but Alice obviously is one of those who can) can see these totally terrifying intangible zombies, then who exactly is fighting against them?

*smirks* So glad you asked.

Meet the crew. Nine guys, two girls. This group of teenagers fights the zombies. Of course, I wouldn’t have accepted this so willingly if a good reason wasn’t supplied because I realize that even though it’s awesome, teenagers can’t fight all the battles all the time realistically. But there’s a reason. I’m not going to tell you what it is, but there is one.

OH. Something I forgot to mention earlier....these zombie fighters can all see the zombies and they fight them by LEAVING their physical bodies and battling them with their spirit forms.

How cool. Is that.

The plot moved well and while there weren’t any gigantic twists, there was a couple small ones that I didn’t see coming at all.

Villains? Check. Apparently some people want to stuff zombie spirits into human bodies to make unstoppable armies. Terrifying? I think yes.

This book was great! Buuut, there were some things I wasn’t as crazy about.

There’s a love interest (named Cole) who is the leader of the zombie fighters. I think he makes a great leader. He has his fighters’ loyalty, seriously awesomesauce fighting skills, and he has presence.

However, I wasn’t sure if he was right for Alice. It kind of seemed like, to me, he was all macho-
man and objectified Alice sometimes. I’m just not sure that he was the best guy for Alice. Of course, she could take him ;) and he really cared about her, but I felt like there was a chance that he could become too possessive.

Also, THERE WERE SO MANY NAMES TO REMEMBER. I am awful at remembering names.
And I’m supposed to remember all eleven zombie fighters plus other characters?? Uh. I’m going to need a notepad and pen to write these down. There’s no way I’m remembering ALL of them.

Overall this was a really great read and I recommend it to readers who enjoy paranormal, zombies, dark and mysterious guys (who have purple eyes), sassiness, and fighting for lives.

About Skylar Finn:

Skylar Finn is the pen name of a recent high school graduate (who never gets tired of saying she's graduated). Her real name is top secret because she's secretly a spy. That does spy stuff. Secretly. When she's not spying, she blogs about books, life, and chocolate at Life of a Random. Skylar loves talking with bookworms about everything, so don't be shy. She's probably weirder than you anyways.